Postgame Quotes: Kentucky (April 2)

2021 Mississippi State Baseball
Postgame Quotes
Mississippi State vs. Kentucky
April 2, 2021

Head Coach Chris Lemonis

Q: What was [Cole Stupp] doing to get you guys a lot of groundouts?
CL: It's just his sinker-changeup mix, and he's done it all year long. I think coming into the game, [he's allowed] 19 flyball and 40 groundball outs. Every week he's done kind of the same thing, and we just could not get under it and we kept trying. You have to tip your hat to him, and we're not hitting great right now either, so it's a little bit more of a challenge.

Q: He's only allowed four walks coming into the game, did you feel it was huge to get a leadoff walk in the sixth inning?
CL: It was, and I thought so, too. Especially being our leadoff guy with our best hitters coming up behind him. Even though he didn't throw a lot of pitches, there were some long [stretches] in there for him to have to come back out of. He had followed our inning where we had to get off the field with Will [Bednar] striking the guy out, so I thought we brought a little momentum in and the walk kind of got us going.

Q: Luke Hancock has four sacrifice flies in the last two games, how surprised were you that he didn't get intentionally walked in the eighth inning?
CL: I guess you could intentionally walk him, but the negative is when you come in and your first pitch is a curveball, and you throw it eight feet over the catcher's head then it's hard to throw it again, and so we knew we were getting a fastball. I felt good with Luke [Hancock] up there. I felt good with Kamren [James] up there knowing that [he was getting a fastball]. It's a good fastball. I guess if you look back now, yeah, you probably walk him. Luke's been really good all week and he's got some big swings and it wouldn't matter; he's had some really big swings.

Q: How happy were you to see that double play after that pop fly fell in the infield?
CL: Yeah, [the missed pop-up] wasn't good to see. We've had that issue and we have to take control of it. Who wants it is our rule. But the best thing about it was, and I told our ballclub after the game, down on the field you know you have a special player in Landon Sims when the ball falls and everybody is upset, and Landon is telling the team to relax. 'Relax, we got this. We're going to make a play.' It showed a lot of maturity on his side, because he usually gets frustrated there and instead, he had so much confidence in himself and one pitch later, he's turning the double play.

Q: What do you feel is the underlying issue at the plate right now?
CL: We're not jumping on fastballs enough, I guess. We're missing our pitch and I think we're doubting ourselves a little bit, which is what you do when you're not hitting. We've got some good offensive players. We haven't been great offensively all year. We've been better at times, but we've got to keep working. These guys are here, they're working, they're getting after it, they're watching film. Over a season's time, you have some ebbs and flows, and unfortunately on offense we've been we're on a down one right now. I know we'll get better offensively as time goes on.

Q: What did you see from Will [Bednar] in terms of getting out of jams tonight?
CL: I thought he was great early. We're still working, because the last two weeks he's got beat a little bit by their best player, leaving the ball over the plate. He's so confident in his stuff that there's not a lot of fear in him and we just need him to make a couple more pitches. Not many, but we leave the ball over the plate to their best guy and he's hot right now. We have to pitch him better as time goes on, but I thought the stuff was great and late in the game the competitiveness was great and getting Oraj Anu out there late in the game to get us out of the inning [was big].

Q: What impact does Rowdey [Jordan] have on this lineup?
CL: He's one of the better early hitters in our league. He's done it for so many years. We've been missing that. There was a huge swing there later and a big swing last night. He's an electric player when he's going. He's had a little bit of trouble getting started. Every guy that we get going right now, it makes it easier for everyone else to hit too. I thought Tanner [Allen] was good tonight and had a good swing. Getting Tanner, Rowdey and some of those guys going will be huge for us.

Mississippi State University Athletics

Postgame Quotes: Kentucky (April 2)

Players Mentioned

Luke Hancock

Landon Sims

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